p>Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No.307 / New Series, Saturday, November 17, 1849
TRACINGS OF THE NORTH OF EUROPE
I left Copenhagen for Elsinore on the last day of June, with two companions, in a char-a-banc; a rough but not inconvenient kind of carriage drawn by two horses. We took the route by Fredericksborg (different from the Fredericksberg already mentioned), in order to visit that most distinguished of all the Danish palaces. The king was living in it at the time; but this was understood to present no difficulty. The life of Frederick VII. is remarkably modest and unobtrusive. Allowing his ministers to govern according to the best of their judgment, he is content to live in the manner almost of a private gentleman. It was stated that at this time, when half the sovereigns of Europe were in the agonies of a revolutionary crisis, the attention of the Danish monarch was chiefly engrossed by some ancient sepulchral tumuli found in his neighbourhood. So great is his disrelish of royal state and parade, that he can only with difficulty be induced to come occasionally to town to give audiences and attend reviews. Yet Denmark is a year old in a constitution which grants something approaching to universal suffrage. Very probably the Sleswig-Holstein war is what has secured this internal peace. Uniting in this external object, the people have escaped as yet the danger of falling together by the ears about progress and reaction. So for once a democratic movement has not been attended by a crop of folly and outrage.
The country passed over in our drive is composed of the tame undulations usual in the chalk formation, varied only by a few lakes and some fine woods. We snatched an interval required for resting the horses to see the queen-dowager's palace at Lundby, which we found to be a plain building situated amongst some pleasant groves, but in no way remarkable, except that the domain was open at all points to any one who chose to leave the high road by which it is skirted. We walked over the grounds, and penetrated into the garden, asking no leave, and meeting no resistance or challenge – a proof not so much, I apprehend, of any special liberality in the royal possessor, as of great harmlessness in the people; for certainly without that, no such indulgence could be extended. The inferiority of the place in point of trimness to similar places in England, and the meagre show of plants in the garden, were remarkable. That fastidious mowing, and paring, and cleaning, which is continually going on round a country residence in England, is unknown in the north of Europe.
All along our way to Fredericksborg I observed heaps of granite and gneiss boulders, ready to be broken up for the repair of the roads. They were to me an interesting set of objects, as being my first introduction to the grand Drift Formation of the north. To most readers it will be enough for the present to say that they are masses of stone belonging to the granitic and gneissic countries of northern Sweden and Finland, which have been carried southward, probably for the most part by icebergs floating in the sea by which this region was once overspread. They are found imbedded in the clayey and gravelly covering of the country, or encumbering its surface; and now the farmers are allowed something for carting them to the roadsides, that they may be pounded down by the disciples of Macadam. The kirb-stones, which form the only approach to a pavement in Copenhagen are from the same source. I examined many of the wayside heaps, as well as those presented in gravel-pits, and found a few with traces of striation, denoting their having undergone rubbing in the transport; but these were rare objects. The cultivated land seems now pretty well cleared of them; but they still abound in forest ground. The sand of the aforesaid gravel-pits is in many places stratified, marking the deposition by water; but I nowhere could detect shells.
At length the pinnacles of Fredericksborg began to appear over the dull landscape, and we speedily found ourselves seated in the village inn at a very tolerable dinner. When this was concluded, we sauntered to the palace, which we found to be a huge brick edifice of the Elizabethan style, forming three sides of a square, with detached masses and courtyards, the whole closely surrounded by water. It is one of the many memorials of the magnificence of the fourth Christian, but was built on the site of a former palace; and amongst the few traces of the original left, is a small island covered with shrubbery. The shrubbery had been planted by Frederick II., the father of Christian, in commemoration of the son having been born on the spot; and under a feeling with which we can all sympathise, the reforming king left this shrubbery untouched. It is said that the new palace took fifteen years in building. Here, again, one wonders that so small a state could at that time furnish funds for the erection of such sumptuous edifices. The unchecked authority exercised by its princes is the only explanation of the mystery. They seem to have regarded palace-building as a legitimate amusement for their leisure hours, and to have been under no sort of scruple as to the sufferings of their people in furnishing the requisite funds. A Danish king, in the last century, told his young queen, in a fit of gallantry, that if she should kill a deer in the chase, he would build a palace on the spot. Such, I am told, was the actual origin of one of the numerous palaces which now adorn the country. To find ourselves now in this gray, old-fashioned château, and be told that the king lived in it, seeing as we did no trace of any state or pageantry whatever, and scarcely any mark of the place being inhabited at all, raised some curious speculations in our minds as to the change of the relations of monarch and subject since the days of Christian IV.
The grand sight of Fredericksborg is the royal chapel, forming the lower floor of one side of the square. It is a superb specimen of that mixture of Grecian and Gothic which prevailed at the end of the sixteenth century; no grandeur of plan, but infinite ornament of detail, gilt reliefs (especially on the ceiling), carvings, and fine inlaid woodwork. The pulpit has pillars of silver, and the altar-piece glows with golden images and sculptures. 'The Swedes,' says Feldborg, 'took away twelve apostles in silver, leaving the figure of Christ, which was formed of the same metal, to preach the Gospel at home, as they wickedly expressed themselves, but declaring that his apostles should do so abroad.' The screened recess for the royal family still contains a range of chairs with wrought seats, which must be coeval with the chapel, as they contain Christian's initials. There is even still the same charity-box at the door, into which this grand old prince must have popped his donations as he passed to worship; for it, too, bears his initials. The coronations of the Danish kings take place here, and this has led to an unfortunate modernisation being effected at one end of the chapel for the accommodation of the throne, with seats for the knights of the Order of the Elephant. In every other particular it is preserved exactly as it was in the days of the founder. I may remark that the shields of the living Elephantine knights adorn the gallery. When they die, these symbols of their glory are removed to a clean, well-kept crypt beneath one of the angles of the palace, where the whole series for the last two centuries may be seen. This is at once a curious historical study and a touching lecture on the transitoriness of all human grandeur.
Over the chapel, and therefore occupying the same area, is the Banqueting-Hall, certainly a most magnificent apartment, being no less than 150 feet long, and of proportionate breadth, though generally thought to be a little deficient in height. This large room is beautifully paved with diced marble, and is covered all over with gilt and painted ornaments, particularly in the ceiling, while each space of wall between two windows contains a portrait of some monarch which had been presented to the Danish sovereigns. The ceiling alone, which is said to have been the work of twenty-six carvers for seven years, might detain a curious visitor for a day, since there is scarcely a familiar animal, or a trade, or art, which is not represented in it. In one compartment you may study the business of Distillatio; in another that of Impressio Librorum, and so forth. One sees in this and similar places many valuable memorials of the things of a former age, which he cannot but regret to leave after only a hasty and superficial inspection. I am convinced that a painstaking and leisurely person, who could take accurate drawings of such objects, would, in the course of a few years' rambles over Europe, acquire the means of producing almost a complete resuscitation of our mediæval ancestors in their dresses, habits, and all other external circumstances.
When we had satisfied our curiosity with the Fredericksborg palace, we returned to the inn, and speedily resumed our char-a-banc, but with fresh horses. I observed with some surprise that the driver, in passing out of the town, deemed himself at liberty to take a short cut through the half-ruinous gateways and rain-bleached courts of the palace, notwithstanding the presence of royalty within the mansion. We found some fine woods extending from the palace in this direction, and peopled with deer. A short drive brought us to